


heaven at my doorstep

by thelilacfield



Series: there is no world where i am not yours [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Guardian Angels, F/M, Mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:02:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25707124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: "Wanda, listen to me-""How do you know my name? Who are you?""Wanda, I...I'm your guardian angel.""My fucking what?"
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Series: there is no world where i am not yours [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859725
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	heaven at my doorstep

**A/N:** Day four of AU-gust! And you can read more about the challenge and see what else is coming **[here](https://augustwritingchallenge.tumblr.com/post/621653119656493056/the-list-of-prompts-was-completed-one-prompt-per#notes)**!

Please leave a comment if you enjoy this fic! I'm on tumblr and twitter **@ mximoffromanoff** if anyone wants to chat!

* * *

The man is still following her. She can see him in the street behind her, his reflection sliding across the windows of shops she passes. No matter how many side streets she turns sharply down, taking a ridiculous roundabout route, he's still just behind her.

Every time she's been out in public for weeks she's seen him. And he never seems to go anywhere but where she is. When she goes into buildings, she can't see him anymore. But when she's walking under the sky, she only has to glance up to catch him at the edge of her peripheral vision, a constant presence. She's thought about calling the police, but what would she say to them? A man who seems to vanish when she tries to look at him directly is following her on the streets, but she never sees him when she goes indoors. She couldn't even properly tell them what he looks like, because she only has the impression. The shadow.

When the local shops and cheerful cafés with their bright signs give way to the edges of the woods, she glances back and sees he's still there. Still behind her when she opens the gate to the graveyard. She leans down at the side of Pietro's grave, dew-damp grass brushing against her bare ankles between the hem of her jeans and her trainers, and she can still see a glint of gold behind her.

Enough is enough. No one comes with her to the graveyard, even her closest friends know not to ask if she wants company. She whirls around, hair flying around her shoulders, and snaps, "Stop _following_ me!"

He wavers into focus now, as if acknowledging him out loud has made him somehow real. And she's momentarily stricken by how handsome he is. Inhumanly beautiful, all eyes as blue as the sky and hair like gilded gold, clothed all in white that seems to glow like starlight. Like something she might read about in a book or watch in a movie, too utterly perfect to be real. And when he speaks it's in a smooth accent, his perfect face furrowing into a frown when he says, "You shouldn't be able to see me."

"You've been following me for _days_ , how would I not have seen you?" she snaps, and his brow furrows deeper in confusion. "Am I supposed to be _blind_? You're always just behind me, I can see you!"

"No, you...you are _not_ supposed to be able to see me!" he insists, and she just rolls her eyes. She stands up and brushes the specks of soil from her thighs, making to move past him. But he catches her wrist in his hand, his grip sure and strong, and his eyes are wild when he asks, "How long have you been able to see me?"

"I don't know, a few weeks," she says, jerking herself out of his grip. "Leave me alone. If I catch you following me again, I'll get the police involved. You're crazy."

"No, no, I...I've been away too long," he says, frantic and wild and making her a little nervous. She's starting to wish she hadn't left that bottle of pepper spray her well-meaning boss gave her when she admitted to taking late trains home in her nightstand. "I can't...you shouldn't be able to see me."

"So you've said, three times," she says, and walks away. The gate's hinges creak when she pushes it open, and when she looks back she sees him sinking back against the low wall, his face set in a mask of horror. Sympathy twangs like a broken guitar string in her chest, and she wants to walk away. She wishes she could just leave the crazy man in the graveyard. But he's a long way from help, and she can't be so cold.

"Can I at least call you a cab or something?" she asks, and he looks up at her. Unfair, really, that even when he looks so scared he's still handsome. "You're a long way from the city. I don't know _why_ , but I can get you home/"

"No you can't," he says, and she bristles. "I'm...not from around here."

"Well where the hell are you from then?" she asks, anger flaring up in her chest. "I'm trying to help you even though you've been following me for days. I don't need this, so if you-"

"Wanda, listen to me-"

"How do you know my name?" It comes out of her cold and angry, and she stares at him feeling ice in her gaze. His perfect hair and his smooth face and his sad eyes, and her voice is hard when she asks, "Who are you?"

"Wanda, I...I'm your guardian angel."

"My fucking _what_?"

"Every human has one." For all the madness of what he's saying, he doesn't actually sound like he's lying. He's watching her closely, waiting for her reaction. "We're assigned to you from the moment you're born, to watch over you and try to steer you towards happiness. When you sit alone and cry at night, we're the comforting presence that helps you sleep. When you can't make a huge life-altering decision, we cause what you think is a coincidence to show you the way. When you suddenly remember to look both ways before crossing the road and avoid being hit by a car, we're the ones who made you pause and look." Then distress overtakes his peaceful face, and he says, "But you're not supposed to be able to _see_ us."

"Then why can I see you?" She folds her arms over her chest, a barrier between them, and stares at him. Her so-called guardian angel. Well, that _would_ explain how inhumanly beautiful he is. If he isn't actually human, that part makes sense. But it does mean that everything she's ever thought about life and independence and making her own decisions is a lie, so she's not convinced and doesn't want to be.

"I don't know, I...maybe my powers are fading from being on Earth for so long, I...I'm sorry if you were concerned for your safety," he says. "My purpose is to ensure your safety and your happiness. It always has been."

"Well, you've done an _amazing_ job of that," she says, and he bows his head in shame. "I'm just the happiest person in the world. I certainly didn't lose my parents and become a refugee before I was even a teenager. We're definitely not standing in the graveyard my brother is buried in."

"In case you're concerned about that, your brother's guardian angel was stripped of their status for allowing him to step into the road that day-"

"I wasn't concerned about that, thanks," she snaps. "In fact, it makes it worse that someone was supposed to look out for him and he still got hit by a bus. Not a tragic accident after all."

"Wanda-"

"Please leave me alone," she says, and he shakes his head, his eyes glistening with an oddly human sadness.

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Wanda. I was assigned to watch over you, and if I turn my back on you then I'm stripped of my status."

"And what happens to you then?" she asks, all sharp edges and anger.

"Every immortal's worst fear," he says, and she blinks. "I die."

* * *

Sitting in her worn armchair, she tries to concentrate on the pages of her book. But every time she even shifts her gaze she can see Vision out of the corner of her eye, hovering on the tiny narrow metal platform that calls itself a balcony outside her apartment. She's already noticed him almost get tangled in her plants, almost knock one of her herb pots off its tray on the railings and onto the street, and she finally stands up and jerks the door open to say, "Would you just come inside? You're a hazard out here."

"I'm not supposed to-"

"Apparently I'm not supposed to be able to _see_ you, so I think what's supposed to happen has been thrown out the window," she says, and he goes silent. He ducks his head like a scolded child and scurries into her apartment. And it's odd to see him in there. Amongst her unwieldy stacks of belongings, the hooks by her door heaving with coats and scarves, her bike propped against the wall and her threadbare couch occupied by her guitar. He's too otherworldly, too ethereal. The silvery glow suffusing his skin makes everything look duller in comparison.

"I know you want me to go away," he says sadly. He's hanging his head and avoiding her eyes, and yet she still looks at him as the inhumanly handsome being he is. Annoying, really, that he can be ashamed but still have the sky in his eyes and gold in his hair. "But I _can't_. I was assigned to you the day you were born and I've done my best to watch over every aspect of your life. I have to."

"Why don't you explain to me how this whole guardian angel thing works, and I'll decide whether or not I want you to go away." He blinks at her, allowing her head to swim a little less when he hides those eyes away. They're far too distracting. "I'm gonna make a cup of tea and listen, okay? Do you want anything? Do you...eat?"

"A cup of tea would be nice," he says, and she nods. She turns away into her tiny kitchen and tries to reconcile the fact that she's making a man who insists he's her guardian angel a cup of tea. She's tried to pretend that she still thinks he's crazy, but it's starting to make sense. The way he vanished when she looked directly at him until she acknowledged that she could see him. Faint memories of a golden man in her dreams when she was a child, guiding her towards good decisions. His voice at the back of her mind when it came to deciding what college courses to take and where to move and who to date.

She finds him still looking for somewhere to sit when she returns, and moves her guitar back to its stand. Once she's folded herself into the armchair, legs tucked beneath her, she looks at him and says, "Okay. Tell me everything."

"Guardians are assigned to a human as soon as that person is born," he says, like he's been waiting to explain this. And she has to wonder if she's the first person to have noticed the existence of her guardian angel, or if this is some kind of script they have to share for people who see them. "In my case, you were born the same day the woman I watched over before you died. She lived a happy life and died peacefully in her sleep. It was the very model of how a guardian should help their human live."

"So why has my life been so fucking miserable?" she asks, and he bows his head in shame. "In fact, if there are guardian angels making sure people make good decisions, why do bad things happen? Why are there people out there treating other people like shit? Why were there people in Sokovia who started the civil war and got my parents killed?"

"You misunderstand our role in your lives, Wanda," he says. "We don't make decisions for you. We can't touch you or talk to you, except maybe in dreams. We can try to push people in the right direction, but there are some people who will always do terrible things. Some people learned to block out their better instincts a long time ago."

"You said my brother's guardian was stripped of their status because he walked in front of a bus," she says, and Vision nods, teeth digging into his lower lip. "What does that mean?"

"There aren't many things that can get us stripped of our status," he says. "You still have the willpower to make your own decisions, and those who make the decisions understand that. But if your subject dies accidentally, you lose your status. There's a whole ceremony for it. We all have to watch other guardians lose their immortality. And then they...they die."

"Immediately?" He nods, and she sinks back into the embrace of the armchair. "That doesn't seem fair. For one mistake, that...dying is a lot."

"We know the risk if we don't do our due diligence," he says. "You can lose your status for other reasons. If your subject does terrible things and you didn't do enough to stop it, they take you away. I know of a guardian who encouraged their subject down a darker path instead of trying to pull them back towards the light. They were tortured before they died."

"Who _makes_ these decisions?" she asks, and he shrugs. "You don't _know_? Your boss is allowed to just kill you off and you don't know who they are?"

"You have to understand, Wanda, these are rare cases," he says. "Most guardians guide their subjects through good lives. We watch you grow up and find your way and have families. When you die, we mourn for a while and then move on to a new subject."

"Sounds a little callous," she says. "So if I died tomorrow, in some tragic situation you couldn't prevent, you'd just move on?"

"We're immortal, Wanda," he says. " _I'm_ immortal. A human life passes me quickly. I will live to see the end of the universe, and that is a hard thing to reconcile." Then he bows his head, his eyes darkening with sadness, and says, "But no, I would not just move on. I would mourn you, just like I've mourned every person I watched over. I have outlived a lot of people I loved."

"Loved?"

"Of course loved," he says. "I watch over you every day of your lives. I see your sad nights alone, your smiles with friends, how you respond to every obstacle the world can throw at you. I watch you grow and change and become the best version of yourself. There is no world in which that does not lead to love."

* * *

She tries to live life normally after Vision tells her everything. But she can't stop thinking about guardian angels, watching over every person she sees on the street. She wonders if the guardian of the woman five people ahead of her at Starbucks will be somehow punished for how their subject is tearing into the poor employee because her coffee isn't hot enough. She thinks about Pietro's guardian, the angel who looked away for a moment and died because her brother was walking too fast and stepped out in front of a bus. She thinks about all the terrible people throughout history whose angels couldn't pull them back. She thinks about the angel who pushed their subject down a darker path, and she wakes from dreams of dying immortals and dark laughter.

Vision becomes a constant background presence in her life. He hovers behind her on streets and in the office, and she allows him into her apartment every night. Despite his insistence that he can act human, she rarely sees him eat or drink. He's always perfectly put-together in his all-white outfits, his hair gilded like the sun and his eyes always resting on her and making something in her chest flutter. When she wakes in the middle of the night he's always in her apartment, ready to talk her out of the lingering nightmare fears. He makes her breakfast some mornings, even brews her coffee, and though it isn't always perfect she tries to appreciate it. It makes her feel a little better, to see some cracks in him. An angel who doesn't know how to brew coffee.

But the bad days still come. Her free will unfortunately extends to her mind, and it's been exactly two years since she got a call at the office from a stranger, informing her they'd found her number in her brother's phone and he was in hospital. Dying in that white bed with the uniform corners, bleeding in ways they couldn't stop, too far gone to even recognise her when she got to the hospital. He died holding her hand, but he didn't even know she was there. He didn't hear her telling him she loved him.

Her coworkers tiptoe around her, knowing what day it is. There's hardly any tasks on her desk, leaving her to think too much, and her supervisor sends her home early. She walks through the park alone, under a grim grey sky. There are children feeding the birds, throwing scraps of bread into the sky for seagulls to catch, and she watches them wistfully.

It's only when she's on the way home that she notices she can't sense Vision. No flash of his angelic glow at the edge of her vision, and no one to tug her back when a delivery person nearly runs her down on their bike. She only escapes by falling back against a bus shelter, brushing herself down and glaring after their retreating back. It reminds her too keenly of why Pietro's guardian angel died, and she takes a different route home to avoid the roads, the rumble of engines rushing by making the hair on the back of her neck stand up with nerves.

When she walks into her apartment, there's the smell of freshly-baked bread, warmth in every room, and Vision has cleaned. The wooden floors are gleaming and he's thrown a blanket over her couch to hide the particularly threadbare portions, and when she closes the door he appears from the kitchen, an apron tied around his waist. "I'm cooking dinner," he says, pride shining on his face. "It took me a while to get to grips with all these. But I'm making us spaghetti carbonara. I made garlic bread too."

"Why?" she asks, and he gives her a glance that he can't hide the sadness in. "Oh...you know what day it is."

"You seemed so sad this morning," he says sadly. "I wanted to do something that might make your day not so terrible. I'm sorry that I left you all afternoon, but I knew you'd be okay." He opens her cupboard and takes down two wine glasses, holding them up to the light to examine them for smudges. "Would you like red or white wine?"

He spreads out a picnic rug on her floor and sets the food out so prettily, like something she might see on Pinterest. It certainly can't be real, an immortal angel spending hours making dinner from scratch simply because she's having a bad day. But he has, and he's poured her a glass of wine and ordered her out of her work clothes, into jeans and a cardigan and comfort. He sits down with her in his soft white clothes, his hair in his eyes and a smudge of flour on his cheek, and she stares at him across the rug.

"Is it good?" he asks anxiously after her first bite, and she nods, giving him a small smile. "Really? Because I wasn't sure what was the right brand to get, you have so many different brands for the same thing and I didn't understand-"

"It's delicious, Vision," she says, and he smiles. He seems to glow a little brighter, and she's fascinated by it. "This is all so sweet. You didn't have to."

"If you're going to be able to see me, then I think it's my duty to make your life happier," he says, and she tucks her feet beneath her.

"Why do you think I was suddenly able to see you?"she asks. "Are there other people who've been able to see their guardians?"

"I don't know," he says. "I don't think any guardian would share if their subject could see them. It's a law among us that our subjects should never know that we exist. I'm sure I'd be punished for this," he gestures between them, "if my superiors were aware."

"That doesn't seem fair," she says. "You're supposed to do whatever you have to so make sure I'm happy. What...what if seeing you and having you in my life like this was what I needed to make me happy?"

"What do you mean?"

"When Pietro died, I lost the only person who ever loved me without condition," she says. "He knew every mistake I'd ever made, every time I could get mean, everything I did wrong. He saw me cry and scream and shout. And he never ever turned his back on me. He never would have/" She finds his eyes and says, "You won't either."

"Of course not," he says. Then he takes a deep breath and says, "But I don't think that the way I feel about you is the same way your brother felt."

"Why?" she asks.

And he leans across the picnic blanket and kisses her.

The craziest thing is that she kisses him back.

* * *

Wanda jolts awake when she hears the door scrape open, jerking her bedroom door open to see Vision back in her apartment. Early morning light permeates the room, and he gives her a blazing smile when he sees her. "Where have you _been_?!" she asks, crossing the room to stare up at him. "You said you'd be gone a few hours. It's been _three days_. I don't have any way to contact you, I was out of my _mind_ worrying!"

"I'm fine, Wanda," he says, and leans down to brush a kiss to her lips. It melts her, extinguishes some of her anger, and when he pulls away he's smiling so brightly the sun could be localised to her apartment and his face. "I'm more than fine. Don't you notice something different?"

She looks up at him, does a quick up and down glance of his body, and finally says, "Please don't tell me you got a tattoo."

"I'm not _glowing_ ," he says, and she takes a step back and looks at him. Really looks. He's still the most handsome man she's ever seen, but there is something different now. He's not quite so inhumanly beautiful. "Wanda, I...I went to my superiors. I explained to them that things between us have become...romantic. And I told them I didn't think I was fit to be your guardian under these circumstances."

"You...but they'll _kill_ you!"

"No, Wanda, they won't," he says, and he tucks her hair gently behind her ear, his face soft and bright with adoration. "I told them I wanted to be with you. And they stripped me of my status."

"But that's a _death sentence_ -"

"They made me mortal," he says, and she finally stops. The frantic terrified patter of her heart slows, and his arms wind around her tighter. "They made me human. I'll have a life on Earth. A life with _you_."

"But...you said every immortal's worst fear is dying," she says, looking up into his bright eyes. "You'll die if you're human."

"Somehow, in all this madness, my worst fear became losing you," he says. "I don't care about dying at the end of all this. All I want is to grow old with you." He touches her cheek so reverently and says, "I love you, Wanda. In the most human way, I love you. I want to buy a house with you. I want to have a family, maybe. If we both want that. I want to watch the grey grow into your hair and know that every day I am choosing you."

For all his dramatic declarations, those are three words he hadn't actually said to her. And she looks at him for a long, still moment before she finally says, "I love you too."

When he takes her in his arms, she feels the joyous beat of his human heart against hers.


End file.
